No serious mishap befell our pair of adventurers until they neared the Katonga River, but just here they dropped in for a streak of ill-luck, which was like to have brought the expedition to a premature and utterly disastrous termination.
Leaving their men in camp one morning, Leigh and Kenyon had set out to thoroughly and carefully explore a mighty kloof, or gorge, in the adjacent hills, expecting to complete their investigations easily in a couple of hours or thereabouts.
As the pair entered this natural mountain fastness, however, it rapidly developed into a deep gorge, along which trickled a stream of water so tiny that it frequently lost itself altogether amongst the stones which served it for a bed.
On either hand great grey barren walls shot up like precipices, whilst mighty scarped-out rocks seemed to hang over the very heads of the explorers, the giant walls elsewhere being thickly fringed towards the skyline with trees and bushes, many of the former absolutely hanging head-downwards, and appearing to maintain their precarious tenure of existence solely by the aid of magnificent festoons of creepers, which hung from tree to rock, and from rock to tree, these gigantic parasites absolutely sustaining the decayed trunks of many a long-dead monarch of the woods, which they had enfolded in their tenacious and eventually fatal embrace; higher still the foliage upon the very summit of the cliffs looked like narrow gleaming threads of green and gold against the dull background of soft sandstone rock. Within the kloof it was unquestionably more or less dark at the best of times, but just now darker than usual, for a vast white cloud, which the pair had noticed in the distance when they entered the pass some hours before, had gradually and ominously settled down, until it seemed to hang like a veritable curtain of rich, fleecy wool directly over the chasm; and as our friends were in the act of discussing the advisability of taking the back track to camp, and returning to complete their investigations on the morrow, this cloud suddenly burst over their very heads, and in one short moment transformed their rocky road into an angry, swelling torrent of leaden-coloured water, alive with branches, trees, and stones, and this now rushed foaming and roaring down the awful pass, sweeping everything before it, and threatening each instant to engulf the two wretched men, who had saved themselves for the nonce by hanging on to a tree trunk which was jammed cross-wise in the narrow gully of rock.
Suddenly Leigh gave a gasp, turned white as death, and relaxed his hold, but ere the water could sweep him away he was in the iron grasp of the American; many an enemy had known to his bitter cost what it was to feel the clutch of the detective, but never had that grip of steel stood a friend in so good a stead as now.
A floating log had struck Leigh violently on the side, dislocating a rib and causing him to swoon away. For several anxious moments it seemed to Kenyon that one or both of them must go, but to his intense relief he suddenly noticed that the rush of the water was becoming less swift, and Leigh at the same time pulling round again to some extent, the twain were soon in comparative safety from the water, which vanished almost as rapidly as it had appeared.
By this time, however, evening was coming on, and this, in the depths tenanted by our friends, quickly meant the darkness of Erebus, and unpleasant though it was, they had no alternative but to sit patiently on their friendly log and wish for daylight. The unfortunates had not even the consolation of a smoke, for both tobacco and matches had been reduced to a mere pulp by the water, nor had they aught in the shape of food or drink save a handful of unpleasantly damp peppermints owned by the American, and a pint of good brown brandy in Leigh’s flask.
Now most people will concede that under such circumstances the consumption of the brandy was not only permissible but distinctly advisable, though very few, perhaps, would care to tackle the peppermints.
Not so, however, our friends, for not once nor twice had they been indebted at a pinch entirely to these simple “sweets” for keeping body and soul together during long days and anxious nights, when, with savage foes following keen-eyed and red-handed on their tracks, any stoppage for food or fire would have meant certain sudden death.
All that Kingsley has said regarding the use of the “divine weed” may be re-written, and with much more truth, in favour of the harmless and not more odorously objectionable peppermint. “A lone man’s companion, a hungry man’s food, a sad man’s cordial, a chilly man’s fire;” all this, and more, did the despised peppermint prove to our friends that awful night, and needless to say they appreciated their oft-tried food at its honest value. Under the coldest conditions it was acceptable to a degree, and almost equally so under a blazing sun, with the thermometer registering 80 degrees in the shade, for whilst it comforted the inside of the body, it cooled the fevered palate by causing every breath of burning tropic air to rush into the mouth like draughts of nectar, laden with a welcome icy message from the far unlovely north.